Tag Archive: joseph sledge

WHITEVILLE, N.C. — A man who spent nearly four decades behind bars was freed from prison Friday after a three-judge panel found him innocent in the 1976 stabbing deaths of a Bladen County mother and her adult daughter.

Raleigh, N.C.— A three-judge panel will convene Friday in Columbus County to hear the case of a man who says he was wrongly convicted of a double murder 38 years ago and that evidence proves it.

The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission last month unanimously voted to send the case of Joseph Sledge for judicial review, finding that sufficient evidence exists to show Sledge did not kill Josephine Davis, 74, and her daughter Ailene Davis, 53, in their Bladen County home in September 1976.

At the time of the crimes, Sledge, now 70, had been serving a four-year sentence at a prison work farm for larceny when he escaped a day before the slayings. That factored into his 1978 conviction, as well as key testimony from two fellow prisoners who said Sledge admitted to the killings. (more…)